Spontaneous blather from author and essayist L. G. Vernon, this blog has as much to do with living as it has to do with writing. It ain't rocket science.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

The Search

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not;

and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad."

~~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow~~

Bill didn't get
in until long after dark. It was summer, blistering summer, in California's Imperial Valley,
the temperature that day soaring above one-hundred-ten degrees. His brown and
tan uniform was crusted with alkali, as was his skin, which was crazed with
bloody scratches. His voice was a whisper, all but gone. Although he washed off
the salt and the blood, and although it's now been years, his eyes still grow
hollow, his face still contorts when he recalls that day.

As a law enforcement ranger, his patrol sector included large stretches of
desert, including the Imperial Sand Dunes, a monstrous recreational area where
visitors from San Diego, Los Angeles, and elsewhere still congregate on
holidays and weekends, bringing with them an assortment of off-road vehicles in
which to enjoy the great outdoors. On this particular day, dispatch received a
frantic call from a family group from which two seven-year-old boys had gone
missing. They'd been riding their child-sized motorcycles in the camp. "Get
out of here," the grownups said. "You're making too much noise."
So they did.

But that had been before lunch; now past noon, they still had not returned.

Heat rose off the desert floor in undulating waves. Nothing moved. There was no
comforting sound of motorcycle engines in the distance. Bill's stomach
plummeted.

He activated search and rescue and rangers rolled in from other sectors, other
counties. He and his people started 'loading up', drinking water and sports
drinks as fast as they could choke them down, knowing. Just knowing. It was too
hot…too hot.

Still, trained to save, Bill held out hope. If they could just get to them in
time…if the boys stayed together they had a better chance…maybe they'd come
back to camp…maybe they were in another camp…maybe…maybe.

They tracked the bikes for miles, in and out of gullies and washes, eventually into the San Sebastian Marsh, an
isolated alkali swamp, maze-like and thick with tamarisk and salt cedar trees,
the ground temperature over one-hundred-thirty degrees, the air stifling, nearly
unbreathable, humidity over ninety percent.

They searched on foot, almost frantically, pushing through stickery
thickets, wading through noxious, stagnant pools—calling out the boys' names
until they had no voices left. A professional searcher collapsed and had to be
air-lifted out, overcome by heat. Bill carried another one out. He and the
others kept on, walking, sometimes crawling. Hours later, exhausted and
broken-hearted, they found the children a few yards apart, their little
motorcycles nearby.

Both of the boys were dead.

Like everyone I know who deals with death, who hands out
grief—who has to be the one to tell, to professionally inform, to see the
dreadful dawning of knowledge on the faces of loved ones that life will never
be the same again—Bill was stoic, his regret efficiently compartmentalized,
tucked down in his gut, there next to Vietnam, next to car crashes, house
fires, murders; nestled in with dozens and dozens of little boxes of
other people's pain all mingled with his own—a lumpy, broken mosaic of
unuttered woe.

That night, we sat together in the dark for a long, long time. As always, there
were no words.

About Me

Novelist and essayist L G Vernon lives and works in Wyoming. She shares her life with her husband. Hampering their existence is a Jack Russell Terrorist named Rowdi. And then there's Spots, of course, who is of questionable lineage. Half Lhasa Apso, the other half could be albino alligator, wildebeest, water buffalo~who knows? But he doesn't shed. Friend me on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/lgvernon